How should I learn about the indigenous germanic religion?

[Glorfindel]

For the sake of Germanic preservation I need to learn all I can. Should I begin with the oldest sources (Runes, cave paintings, tools, etc) and continue chronologically? Should I pick a geographical region or a language? Should I bother translating all or some of what I read in case the translator has biases? I just want to know a good place to start if there is one.

[Þoreiðar]

There isn't much religious knowledge to gain from runic inscriptions, unfortunately. Very few of them contain any references to Germanic mythology, except for some Swedish runestones containing imagery from mythic stories. But even there, it's difficult to decipher much clear and concise information.

I'd say the best place to start, is to read the ancient texts which describe the life, culture, history and myths of Germanic peoples at the time. 'Germania', written by Tacitus in the first century AD, is a must. Then work your way up through the writings of Adam of Bremen, Saxo Grammaticus, Snorri Sturlason, and even ibn Fadlan's short writings about his meeting with the Rus.

And if you haven't already discovered him, Survive the Jive is a decent contemporary content-creator about everything Germanic and Indo-European. https://www.youtube.com/user/ThomasRowsell

[Unregistered]

For the sake of Germanic preservation I need to learn all I can. Should I begin with the oldest sources (Runes, cave paintings, tools, etc) and continue chronologically? Should I pick a geographical region or a language? Should I bother translating all or some of what I read in case the translator has biases? I just want to know a good place to start if there is one.

My recommendation would be to go to aldsidu.com and stay in touch with Robert Sass and his Saxon Heathenry group on Facebook. He seems to be the most historically accurate, reconstructionist Germanic Tribal Heathen I have been able to find. He backs up each of his claims with multiple sources, so you can go behind him and check it out to see whether you agree or not with his findings. Most other Heathens just make claims and don't tell you why, and if you question them, they get easily offended. They call it UPG (unverified personal gnosis), so I would stay away from anyone basing their practices off stuff they basically just made up, and then they call it historical when it is clearly not. Robert Sass doesn't do any of this.